Mexico has a sad and long history, having finished Class Wargames, I am looking to pick up, “Mexico, a brief history”. Here are my other notes & links …
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Class Wargames & the ECW
I have been/am still reading Richard Barbrook’s book, “Class Wargames”. Among its many fascinating themes is his study of the collapse of democratic military forces into dictatorship.He name checks Napoleon, Toussaint Louverture & the Russian Revolution. I wonder why he didn’t start earlier with the English Civil War, it would seem to me to be…
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LP Conference: Delegate & Member power
As a result of arguements about the representative nature of hand votes within the CLP college at LP Conference, I did some sums and a chart. Here are my notes.
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Criminality and the Referendum
The story of the criminal cheating on the Vote Leave campaign is long and complex, and there seems to be a ground rush effect as the election approaches. The issues are breach of personal privacy laws, over spending, covering up the overspending. It is possible that there have been breaches of the transparency rules, and…
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Consitituencies: Leave or Remain
One of the most important issues in the 2019 general elections will be Brexit; that’ why its been called. Polls are proving inaccurate so the only data we have is the 2016 Referendum which was counted and results released at Local Authority level. I am deeply interested in knowing how consitiuencies votes and I am…
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Multiple Choice Voting systems
So as the rerun of the referendum becomes more likely, some people are considering a multiple choice; the problem is how to weight and count the votes. It interests me that instant run off is people’s first port of call, and I have some links that refer to it. On first site, the problem is…
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Labour 19 & Brexit
I wrote a piece on the LP Brexit debate at #lab19 and in the next few days a number of people commented on the debate, I thought I’d make a little wiki article, bookmarking them; some of these articles are mirrors made by me. As ever, for more, see overleaf/below …
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On Presidentialism
While writing and thinking about the democratic legitimacy of the Referendum, I discovered the work of Juan J Linz. This article initially hosted my thoughts on Linz’s views on the US Presidential system and its clones. I returned to it in the Autumn of 2021 when questions of why the founding fathers did it this…
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Labour Conference 2019
And now we’re on the runway to #lab19. Let’s see if I can make it 4 in a row.
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On the fitness of Keith Vaz
Over the summer of 2019, Keith Vaz reused his medical condition to have decisions of Labour’ NEC Disputes Committee reviewed. It’s not the first time and raises the question of whether you can be partially sick. Obviously in employment, one can be recommended ‘light duties’ or employers can be made to make “reasonable adjustments” in…
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Redistricting Lewisham
London is reviewing its local government ward boundaries. Lewisham is included; here are my notes.
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Energy, Climate Change and Just Transition
I need to consider the politics of energy and climate change. I shall be looking at the politics inside the labour party but I should look at what the UK Government is saying. This was originally written when I returned from GMB 2019, augmented with GMB items in 2020 and then some links and comments made…
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Illegal Wars
I have been pushed to having a look at the law and war crimes, partly, as a result of meeting again, a bunch of people who think they can substitute their own judgement vs. the Rule of Law. Here are, as ever, my notes.
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Social Housing Finance
I attended a presentation on Lewisham’s Housing policy last night and was wondering why the lifting of the borrowing cap wasn’t more effective. Here are my notes on social housing finance.
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Visualising Electoral Data
My last post, Looking at the local election results, reminded me that I had been looking at how to visualise political data. Here are my notes. …
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